How to contribute to a DIY Drones project?

One of the biggest challenges in an open source development project is getting the "architecture of participation" right. Like a great game, contributing should be easy to pick up but hard to master, giving people of all skills and experience an opportunity to engage. Right now we have scores of developers working on dozens of projects, but a lot of it is behind the scenes on private email lists, Skype calls and IM threads, Google Docs and 3D Robotics project trackers. You can see the tip of the iceberg in the change logs, but that's just a hint of the activity that goes on every day.

If you'd like to get involved with the DIY Drones dev teams, here are a few places to start:

The Dronecode Project (part of the Linux Foundation), which is the umbrella organization for the APM, PX4 and other DIY Drones software projects

This list was created by Doug Weibel, but I think #5 refers to autolanding with fixed wing aircraft using the ArduCopter sonar library. We need to figure out how to translate sonar altitude into a landing flare for a soft landing with a plane.

Aha. Perhaps my confusion started by assuming #5 was for the ArduCopter. I was imagining my Octo flying in fast and flaring before a landing a lot like the huey's in vietnam or something. Unfortunately I have no experience with the ArduPlane setup. I think I will attempt creating a new mode for the ArduCopter. Sorry for the confusion.

I gave this list to Chris, and would be happy to chat with anyone interested in doing any of these. I basically know how to do all of them, but am very busy and don't get these done due to work on other issues/projects.

In fact, I would encourage you to contact me if you are interested. In many cases getting a bit more background info will save a lot of wasted time and help you come up with a solution that better fits into the ArduPlane architecture. I don't want to publish my email to the whole internet, but if you PM me through the site I will be happy to chat with you directly by PM, email or Skype.

Jose, yes, I'll ask Jason and Randy to create a list for that, too, as soon as it comes out of beta. Right now we want the initial build to be 100% solid before we bring other people into the dev teams.